


Running on Empty

by aurilly



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M, Oceanic Six
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-29
Updated: 2010-04-29
Packaged: 2017-10-09 22:03:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After saying goodbye on Penny's boat, Frank can't get Sun out of his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running on Empty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ozmissage](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ozmissage).



They’re running out of gas and people are jumping and ol’ crazy eyes is yelling about a bomb, but Frank is a man, and even when the world is falling down around them, men notice women. She’s a pretty, almost ethereal (Frank doesn't usually think in such airy-fairy terms, but this bird deserves special treatment), and even though shit is going to hell, it must be his lucky day, because she appears to be a friend of his passengers.

Within seconds, it turns out to be his most _un_lucky day. The Asian guy they leave to his death is her husband. Not only was she married, but _he’s_ the reason she isn’t anymore.

Sun spends the week on the boat giving Jack and Kate the stink-eye, but for some reason she doesn’t seem to blame Frank, the pilot, the one actually responsible. She actually _talks_ to him, as much as she talks to Hurley or Sayid or Desmond, even though he doesn’t deserve it. They chat about little bits of nothingness: about the island, and the Others, and her vegetable garden, and lost friends like Kevin the freighter janitor, Aaron’s real mother, and some girl named Shannon who sounds like she was a real piece of work.

When they part ways, only Sun and Hurley seem to give a damn about him. It’s alright, though. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but he’s had more than enough of this group’s drama. He just says, "Bye," since he doesn't feel that his usual "see ya" is applicable here. He isn't supposed to see any of them ever again. Sun gives him a hug and waves a sad little wave as Jack and Sayid paddle away. He can feel the ghost of her fingers through his shirt all the way to Fiji, where Penny lets him off.

Frank has never been one to follow the news unless it’s directly relevant to his life. It's funny how in the past year, it feels like _all_ the news is relevant. He watches every day, smirking inside at the lies these people tell and the way everyone soaks it all up. Not that anyone would ever believe the truth. Funny how life works that way.

He'd lived with these people for over a week, but he feels like it’s only through the news that he gets to know them. Kate Austen, rampaging killer; somehow that had never been mentioned. Jack Shephard, miracle worker; that one actually wasn't all too surprising. Sayid Jarrah, desperate romantic; who knew? Hugo Reyes, gazillionaire; he sure didn't act like one. Sun Kwon, daughter of gazillionaire; somehow even more surprising.

He watches her in all of the reports, looking distant and pained, trying to pretend that her wounds are less fresh than they actually are, that the screams he remembers so piercingly never happened. He watches and feels guilt like he’s never felt before.

It’s wrong and it’s selfish and she’s _pregnant_, for fuck’s sake, but those scraps of conversation replay themselves in his mind long after he’s switched off CNN and long after CNN has switched off of her. Everyone’s fifteen minutes of fame run out after… well, fifteen minutes, right?

Frank continues to fly around the world. He'd quit his job with Oceanic in order to join Widmore's freighter, but he’s a good pilot and finding a new gig isn't hard. He does his job and he does it well, pretending nothing has changed, even though it has. _He_ never saw any monster, but knowing one is out there is enough to rock anyone's world view.

Sun's out there, too. Frank flies in and out of Seoul every so often with Ajira, but Kwon is hardly an uncommon last name, and he can't make heads of tails of languages that have characters instead of letters. As far as he's concerned, she’s as lost as she was on the island. Plus, Frank has a feeling Jack wouldn't like him looking her up.

A few months after returning to civilization, Frank reads it in the newspaper: _"Oceanic 815 survivor Sun Kwon buys Paik Industries just before giving birth to baby girl."_

It's the clue he's been looking for. _Fuck Jack_, Frank decides.

He waits a couple of months, and then googles Paik Industries, typing with one finger while biting savagely into an apple. Sun is no longer a private citizen lost in an unreadable phone book. She has an office now, a phone number, and a secretary on whom Frank hangs up without saying a word. It's one thing to call; it's another to know what he's supposed to say.

He waits another year and a half. It’s the decent thing to do, he tells himself, and Frank is nothing if not decent.

The guys at work tease him about wanting to take vacation time in Korea of all places. “Got a girl there?” they ask. He wants to punch them, because they’re more right than they know, except that they aren’t right at all.

When he gets to the lobby, he asks the receptionist to let Sun Kwon know that Frank Lapidus is there to see her. It takes some wrangling, between the language barrier, the culture barrier, and the fact that he doesn’t have an appointment much less a plausible way of convincing the receptionist that he isn’t a psycho-stalker (maybe he is). In the end, he finds a young secretary with a weakness for sweaty, blue-eyed pilots. She takes him upstairs.

“Mrs. Kwon, a Mr. Lapidus is here to see you.” Frank doesn’t speak a word of Korean, but some things don’t need translating. He’s standing outside the door of the big boss’s office as the girl announces him. He can hear a chair scratch against the floor and Sun’s quiet voice repeat, “Lapidus?” Something happens that Frank can't quite hear, but when his little friend comes back into the hallway and shuts the door behind her, she looks terrified and a little bit angry.

This was a terrible idea.

“She doesn’t know anyone named Lapidus,” the secretary says. “Please follow me to the exit.”

_Well, shit_. “I hope I didn’t get you into trouble,” Frank apologizes, feeling crushed. The girl glares at him.

On his way out, another woman, running by him without acknowledging him, slips an envelope into his hand and keeps going. Frank pretends nothing’s happened until he reaches a bar down the street. He definitely needs a drink after all that.

Inside the envelope are a key and a note.

  
_I’ll meet you at my apartment. Come after 8._   


 

The address is below, written in both Western letters and Korean characters.

Frank downs his whiskey. And then another.

Later, he knocks on a door in a scarily glamorous apartment building, and Sun opens it, dressed in a suit and looking nothing like the beautifully bedraggled woman he knew on _The Searcher_. She stares expressionlessly for a second, as though sizing him up, and then a hint of a smile stretches her tightly pressed lips.

“If I hadn’t known you were coming, I would not have recognized you. You look different without your beard.” She always had a knack for telling it like it was; Frank never knew if it was lack of native English fluency or just her personality, but either way, he kind of likes it. He just hopes that ‘different’ means ‘better’.

“That was just something I was trying out back then when I didn’t have a real job,” he replies as she ushers him in.

This sleek, modernist apartment is as jarring as her suit. Just as Frank’s wondering to himself what the hell he’s doing here, Sun asks, “So what brings you here? Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. I just wanted to check on you.”

Sun studies him again and then leans in to give him a little peck on the cheek that quickly turns into a full-body hug. Sun grips Frank much more tightly than he expected, and he has a feeling she’s repressing the urge to burst into tears. She's so little that he's afraid to hold her as close as he wants to, for fear of breaking her.

“Thank you,” she whispers into his shirt pocket.

It should be the most awkward experience of his life, but Frank’s suddenly oddly at home. Ill-advised as this visit was, he’s glad now that he came.

“Where’s the rugrat?” he asks, still holding her, feeling her hair tickle against his neck.

“She’s asleep. Come, I will show her to you. But shhhh…” Sun wraps her tiny hand around his and leads him to the other end of the apartment. She pushes the door in a little to show a sweet toddler fast asleep. She’s the spitting image of the poor screaming bastard who haunts Frank’s nightmares. At the sight of her, whatever crazy fantasies Frank had entertained about this visit are gone; the guilt is back and he wonders how he ever thought he could deserve to make a move.

When Sun closes the door again, Frank says, “She’s beautiful.”

“Thank you. Would you like something to drink?”

“Sure,” he says, hoping that she’ll give him lemonade or something, because he’s still getting over that whiskey.

“How long are you here for?” Sun asks on the way to kitchen. She gestures for him to go out on the balcony, where he finds two lounge chairs.

“Just a few days.”

“Where are you staying?” she asks next, reappearing on the balcony with a tray holding two glasses and a bottle of that fancy French-looking pink lemonade he’s seen sometimes in expensive airplane bars.

Frank shrugs, watching as she pours them both a drink. “Some hotel near the airport. I have no idea what it’s called.”

Sun shakes her head and takes his hand again. “No you aren’t. You’re staying here, for as long as you want. I can show you around the city tomorrow, if you like.”

Frank isn’t sure what comes over him, but he takes advantage of their already joined hands to bring hers to his lips. He kisses the soft skin lightly, fixing blue eyes on brown. “Thanks, Sun.”

“It’s my pleasure. I have often thought about how nice it would be to see you again.”

“I’m really sorry,” he blurts out, apropos of nothing. The sweet way she’s looking at him, how nice she’s being---he doesn’t deserve it and he feels like he’s the only one who sees the elephant in the room.

“It wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you,” she says, and then bends over to return his hand kiss with another one on the cheek. Frank feels his face turn red.

He breathes a sigh of relief on his own behalf and tries not to get too excited, but something hard in her voice makes him afraid for the people she _does_ hold responsible.


End file.
